American Horror Story - Season 3 - Teenage Frankenstein
by leaftheweed
Summary: Do you like warm (cold) bodies and boy parts? Zoe does. And Kyle can't live without her. This was meant to be a one-shot but it grows with each passing episode. Come see the world through Kyle's eyes.
1. Chapter 1 - Teenage Frankenstein

...

I'm a teenage Frankenstein  
The local freak with the twisted mind  
I'm a teenage Frankenstein  
These ain't my hands  
And these legs ain't mine

_Teenage Frankenstein_ - Alice Cooper

...

Kyle tried to wake up. He had never failed at waking up before but there was a first time for everything. His eyes simply wouldn't open. He wasn't paralyzed; he could feel them. He could feel his eyeballs rolling under the lids as he fought to open them. He tossed his head to the side, trying to shake his eyes open. It worked, partially. He felt an involuntary twitch in his fingers. Then his middle sat up. He didn't tell it to, it just did. Since he didn't send the signal, his arms didn't help. They just hung there.

The world was a hazy blur of darkness and gray and blue and light and more darkness. He felt like he was drowning. He gasped and his whole body gave a mighty spasm, like it was trying to run away from itself in all directions at once. He thought he was having a seizure but the shaking didn't continue.

There was a dark blur of a thing in front of him. His right arm lashed out and whacked it in the head region. The thing lunged at him and he head-butted it. The thing dropped out of sight and he heard a familiar voice. He focused on that and saw the source nearby. She was a haze of light in the darkness, silvery gray with dark pools where eyes should be. It was an ethereal effect and it soothed him even though he couldn't understand what she was saying.

She cleaned him off somewhat, crying while she gently swabbed him with wet towels. She said her name was Zoe and she kept apologizing over and over; for the towels, for the cold water, for his nudity and even more towels to cover that up. She put clothes on him. He didn't know who they belonged to, nor did he care. His limbs were twitching and tensing it weird ways he couldn't control. He couldn't remember how to make his mouth say words. He was having a really hard time just thinking in words. Impulses were easier. Instincts.

She put him in a car. He vaguely remembered what one was but the movement of the vehicle once they were on the road really started to mess with him. She started apologizing again. His insides felt like they were going to crawl out his ears. Then his body went into full-scale riot mode as every piece of him tried to reject the abomination the young witches had crafted him into. He was a crime against nature as well as life and death. But while he was a sloppily sewn-together ragdoll, his stitches were very strong.

He blacked out for a bit shortly after he heard the lady in the back seat speak. When he next opened his eyes the car had stopped. Zoe and the lady who said her name was Misty helped him out of the car and into the swamp. Crickets and frogs chirred all around in staccato song. It was dark but he had no trouble seeing. Everything had a silvery haze to it, like Zoe and Misty did. He liked this place better than the towel place or the car. It was cool and damp and quiet here.

The women led him to a stilt house that hunkered above the river. Spanish moss hung from the underside. Somewhere down below, an alligator hissed as they went up.

...

By the time Misty Day got her mud poultice smeared into his stitches Kyle could see both women clearly, as people not specters or silvery witches. He nearly had his body under control. He could sit mostly still while Misty applied the glop. It took effort, though; conscious thought. He wasn't paying attention to what the women were saying or doing until he heard Zoe say she was going to leave.

He panicked and tears burned his eyes. It hadn't occurred to him that she would go anywhere without him. She was the only thing in the world that made sense. Misty was starting to, though, and even she looked like she hadn't thought Zoe would leave. That scared him. He reached for Zoe, trying desperately to tell her that he wanted to go with her or that she should stay but the words were missing and all that came out was guttural grunting.

She came close enough to touch. He caught her hand and reeled her in. He put her hand on his eyes so she could feel his tears. Maybe that would tell her. But it didn't work. She was pulling away, leaving, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Misty would heal him, she said. But could she explain what he was, _how_ he was and what he was supposed to do with himself?

...

* * *

Author's Note:

I tried to resist writing anything this season till this season had more than a couple of shows but I just couldn't help myself. Season 1.5 got really _really_ ugly. I needed something else to think about for a bit and after re-watching episode 2, this zombie drabble just had to come out. Especially since I (a long time Alice Cooper fan) had the perfect song queued up for it. Go listen to it if you haven't before.

"Young witches had crafted him into" was a deliberate tongue-in-cheek reference to the movie _The Craft_.

I now return you to my regularly-scheduled fan-fic'ing.


	2. Chapter 2 - Touched

**Warning!** Contains squicky incest and graphic violence. Don't read it if you don't want to be traumatized.

Play this song: _Doll Parts_ by Hole

* * *

...

Kyle wanted to run. He wanted to turn his back on the old shotgun row house and run - after Zoe, back to the swamp, anywhere. And when he tried to make his left leg do the motion that would turn him around, he fell forward and hit his head on the door. Despite all the healing Misty had done, his limbs were still not his limbs. He couldn't really tell them what to do.

He didn't even have full control over his head. His mouth was still suffering a disconnect from his thoughts. His eyes were focusing better but things were still blurry around the edges. He couldn't quite hear right either. Changes in sound were startling, even if they weren't startling sounds in their own right.

When his mother screamed it was like an ice pick in his brain. He wanted desperately to run. But she opened the door and he fell into the house. Into her arms.

...

**4 years ago**

It had been another of mom's bad days. When Kyle got home from school she was sprawled on the sofa, stoned and puffy-faced from crying all day. It hurt the boy to see her so miserable. He knew where it would lead, too. He'd been through too many evenings like this already, since dad left. She'd sob, she would tell him how she didn't deserve such a great son, then she'd talk about how badly she wanted to die. He hated hearing her say that. He felt so helpless.

She put on a weak smile and held a hand out to him. "Hey," she said. Her voice was raspy from smoking and crying. She sat up. She was wearing the same clothes she'd been wearing the past two days.

"Ma," he said. He set his backpack down and went over to sit beside her. "Ma, you can't keep torturing yourself like this."

She leaned against him, put an arm around him and rested her head on his shoulder. He hugged her.

"He's not worth it," he said quietly. He was privately pissed that his dad could leave them in such a state but he wouldn't add that to her troubles. She was frail enough as it was. "We don't need him."

"You're so good to me," she sniffled. She was crying again. "You're the only man in the whole world who ever really loved me. I don't know what I would do without you."

"Ma," he said. He could tell she was going to start talking about suicide soon. "Don't talk like that."

She put a hand on the curve of his cheek. Tears streamed down hers. "Oh, Kyle. I love you so much. I don't deserve a son like you."

He looked at her helplessly, not wanting to go through this same talk again and not knowing how to prevent it. But she didn't say her next lines. She just kissed him on the cheek. She looked in his eyes and stroked his cheek with her thumb. Then she kissed him again, on the mouth. It had been years since they had mouth-kissed; not since he was in preschool and things like that were normal between mothers and children.

She kissed him again and pushed her tongue into his mouth. He froze. He knew what was happening wasn't supposed to be happening but he didn't know what to do. Her hand went under his shirt, skin on skin. Then her hand was on his fly, tugging it open while she kept kissing him. It wasn't long before she was straddling him. He couldn't push her away. She needed him. His body was slow to respond; he was tense and scared and feeling a bit sick. But his body did respond to her skilled touches and that made him feel even worse. But she needed him. So he answered that need, just like he answered all her other needs.

It was just the first of what would become a steady string of encounters that he wouldn't think of when he wasn't immediately in them. She never talked about killing herself again. Not to him.

...

**Present day**

Her hands were on him. She was grinding herself against him. It set his teeth on edge. In the past he could endure it by thinking of other things but he couldn't think of other things anymore. Thinking was still a struggle. He could only feel. And at that moment he felt preyed on; restrained by her grabbing hands. He trembled. He wanted badly to push her away and the limbs that weren't his were twitching with the urge to respond.

In a flash of clarity he saw his future. He would be stuck in the shotgun shack forever, a prisoner to his mother's whims. When he was alive he had been looking forward to graduating college so he could find a place of his own. He wasn't going to leave New Orleans but at least he would be able to live his own life. She said he was dead. He had no life to live now.

Her hands shoved his over her crotch and something inside him snapped. He found a word. He found it but it wouldn't come out. It was like trying to pass a kidney stone: It was stuck near his tongue, aching to come out. His blood rushed through his veins, hammered through his heart. He forced air through his throat and shaped it into a primal scream. And somewhere in the sound he found the shape of the word he needed so badly. A word he should have said years before.

"NOOOOOOOO!"

The word dissolved into the yell and he grabbed the nearest thing and started beating her with it. He hit her till he couldn't see her face anymore, screaming and using his word again and again. When she was a completely unrecognizable mess of bloody brains and gore he staggered to his feet.

He tingled all over. For the first time since waking up in the towel place he had controlled his whole body. He could feel that control ebbing again but he'd had it. For just a few precious moments he'd been able to tell his scarred body what to do and it had responded. He left the room and lumbered to the living room where he crouched down in the glow of the television. His right hand was still clutching the bloody trophy. Strands of his mother's hair were stuck in the blood.

He pulled himself into a sheltering curl and started to rock. It wasn't a deliberate motion. It just happened, a response to his frazzled state. He didn't know why Zoe had put him here. He didn't understand why she kept going away. He longed for the swamp again. For Zoe. For something that made sense. He could still feel his mother's hands on him. He rocked more to chase the feeling away. There were no thoughts of what to do next or what would happen. It didn't occur to him to hide her body. He simply couldn't think in straight lines. All he could do was rock and hug the trophy that had freed him from his mother's unwanted touch forever.

...

* * *

Author's Note:

Yeah, yeah. I know I said this was a one-shot but I got a lot of requests to keep going so you guys only have yourselves to blame for this.


	3. Chapter 3 - Trick or Treat

"Great zombie costume!" a woman dressed as a corny scarecrow said as she passed with her little Jedi Knight.

Kyle stared at her as he shuffled slowly past. She didn't notice; she thought he was acting his part. She didn't know that the blood and gore all over him was real. Zoe had tried to fix that. She'd helped him into the bathroom and told him to shower but he didn't clean up. He didn't want to see those mismatched, unfamiliar parts again.

When the mom and child were too far away to watch and still walk, the pieced-together teen shifted his attention back to the sidewalk ahead of him. Everywhere people were coming out dressed for Halloween.

_Who are you, if you're not my son!?_

The words echoed in his head as he shuffled along.

_Not Kyle._

He couldn't be Kyle. His parts weren't Kyle's parts. His thoughts weren't Kyle's thoughts. He didn't feel like Kyle. He felt like someone else. But who was he? _What_ was he?

He didn't know. He looked into the faces of the trick-or-treaters that passed but there was nothing in their painted faces and garish masks that could help him. Every time Zoe came around, she cried and apologized and left again. She'd done it again when he'd failed to wash himself. So he'd left too. He wanted to go back to the swamp. With Misty he would be with someone who seemed happy around him. She may not have many answers for him but she hugged him and didn't cry when she looked at him.

He walked for a long time, till after sunset and well into night, trying to remember how to get to Misty's shack. He shambled down a side street, a narrow and cracked stretch of pavement shadowed by ancient, sprawling oak trees. A wall to his right separated the road from the cemetery. Up ahead a mulatto girl of about 10 years was walking slowly, looking into her candy bucket. She was dressed as a fairy. Her costume was second-hand and had seen better days. The candy she had collected was all she'd had in months.

She passed a wrought iron gate that led into the cemetery and a couple of boys stepped out. They were about Kyle's age when he'd been alive. One grabbed the girl's candy bucket and shoved her back. She sat down hard on the broken road.

"Hey!" she said, small and hurt. "That's mine!"

"It's ours now," said one of the boys.

"Yeah," said the other one. "Go get your own, you stupid little bitch."

They both laughed. She got up and glared at them. She had tears in her eyes but she didn't cry. The whole situation made Kyle's blood rush with a similar rage to the kind his mother had sparked. He didn't think. He just acted. In a few quick steps he was between the boys and the girl.

"What the fuck do you want, white boy?" said the one with the candy bucket.

Kyle grabbed the bucket and pulled as hard as he could, yelling incoherently as he did. He ripped the plastic pumpkin out of the teen's hands so violently it took a little skin off the other guy's fingers. The candy thief yelled now too. Kyle dropped the bucket and slammed a fist into the bully's face. He stopped yelling and dropped in a limp heap.

The other kid looked at his friend, then he looked at Kyle, who yelled again and lunged for him. The other boy gave a little yelp, turned and ran. Kyle grabbed a chunk of broken asphalt and threw it at him, pegging him in the small of the back. The guy grabbed at the spot but kept running. Soon he was gone.

Kyle stood there seething for a moment. Then his blood cooled and he felt lethargy setting in again. He looked back and saw the mulatto girl standing there staring at him. He looked at her for a moment then grabbed the bucket's handle. He shambled over to her and offered it to her. She hesitated then took it. Then she plucked one of the fabric flowers off her dress and she held it out to him.

He hesitated, just like she had, then he took it. She smiled. Then she ran off down the street toward her house, to tell her maman about the nice zombie who saved her. Kyle watched her go. Then he looked at the crumpled flower, a tiny faded violet. He closed his hand around it then started to move again.

As he rounded the cemetery he saw a whole bunch of dead people migrating out into the street. He could tell they weren't trick-or-treaters. He thought maybe they were like him. So he shuffled into the crowd of rotting brides and old people. Maybe they would lead him to answers.

* * *

Author's Note:

Kyle didn't get enough face time for my liking in the most recent episode of Coven but I didn't want to risk writing something that might get undermined next time so... I looked to Mary Shelley for inspiration. I always loved the scene where Frankenstein and the little girl are playing together and she gives him flowers. So I went with that. I couldn't resist putting a nod to AHS Season 1 when deciding what sort of flower she'd given him.

I don't expect to see Kyle in the zombie horde next week but if he does, well. We'll know why.

As a side note, the veve (pronounced veyvey) - the mark Marie Laveaux used for her zombie spell - belongs to Maman Brigitte, wife to Baron Samedi - the loa of the cemeteries and dead. She blesses those whose graves are marked with a cross. Which is probably why we saw a zombie come up from the grave with a cross marker... and why Madison didn't.


	4. Chapter 4 - Music Hath Charms

Shambling with the zombie horde worked well for Kyle, for a while. But then they all stopped on a long stretch of lawn and just stood there. He stood with them for a while but when it became obvious they weren't going to lead him anywhere else, he finally trudged away. He tried to keep track of where he was going but nothing looked familiar. He knew it should but it was like a dream - or a nightmare. It was the New Orleans he knew and yet it wasn't.

He wound up on the Vieux Carré, weaving between and bumping into revelers celebrating Halloween in a variety of costumes. Some were lurching about even worse than the zombies Kyle had been with, though their excuse lay in the alcoholic hurricanes they carried with them in go-cups.

Over the din of the crowd, Kyle heard music. It tickled his foggy brain and brought impressions of better times. Times when things made sense. He moved toward it, drawn to the source: A squat two-story building with an upper balcony spilling over with drunk party-goers. He moved to the wide open doors beneath the neon sign that declared it Café Lafitte in Exile - Grandaddy of 'em All.

The crowd inside and above was even more bizarre than the one on the street. Half of the women were plainly men in drag, some so poorly done up that they looked almost like they were mocking the ones who'd bothered to shave their legs and hide their 'T'. The men who weren't women were either mostly-undressed or looked like they'd be right at home on the cover of an old Village People album.

But the people didn't matter to Kyle. The music is what drew him. He followed it to the back where a live performance was taking place. A slender woman with waist-length curly black hair had the mic and was singing a bluesy tune in French. She wore a skin-tight black sequined dress slit up to her hip. When she moved, it exposed the full length of her shapely white leg. She wore a pair of black fuzzy rabbit ears. She was a mirror-dark nod to Jessica Rabbit and she held the rapt attention of many spell-struck admirers.

Kyle watched her in a daze, mesmerized by her voice. She noticed his attention and even sang a few bars especially for him before moving on to the next guy. Kyle leaned against the stage to keep her in plain view and was immediately pushed back by a burly bouncer dressed as a 'sexy policeman'. The resurrected college boy stared at him, hands twitching with an urge to hit. But then the singer's voice reached him and the urge for violence faded. He looked her way again and saw her sauntering back his way.

He stayed at the stage until her set finished. When the music ended, so did the peace he'd found there. The noise and press of the strange crowd quickly began to chafe his senses. He felt trapped. He was just starting to panic when he heard her smooth voice again, right beside him.

"Ya look a li'l lost, 'hawt." Her speaking voice was velvet but a far cry from the French she was singing. Her words were 100% New Orleans yat. "Ya wanna come back stage? The drinks're bettah an' it's a lot less crowded."

He must have given her a strange look because she laughed, a sound that was just as melodic as her singing. "It's all right, sug. I'm a star 'round here. They let me do what I want. But here."

She leaned in then and slipped a lanyard with a backstage pass clipped to it around his neck. He lifted it awkwardly to look at it. He couldn't make out the words in the club's flashing lights so he dropped it again. The singer was already sashaying away, toward the small door guarded by another deadly-serious bouncer.

She glanced back. "Comin'?"

He didn't have a better plan so he shuffled after her, hoping she would sing again.

...

Backstage things were a lot quieter. The woman in black led him down a narrow hall that smelled of sweat and age. They passed other people occasionally, mostly men, all in costume.

"This way, sug," the singer said, glancing back over a shoulder to smile at him encouragingly.

She led him to the green room - at least that's what someone had written on the yellow sheet of paper taped to the door. There were a couple of old couches and a long rack of performance costumes tucked back in one corner. There were a few people in the room, most of them so wasted they were slumped on the couches and barely moving.

"Don't mind the ghouls," the singer said. "Some of 'em have been here for days."

She moved over to a long counter that lined one wall. A brightly lit studio mirror was hung on the wall above it. Below, where make up would normally sit, a cocktail row had been set up: Wine coolers, beer, bottles of hard liquor, small mirrors with white powder and even a couple of syringes were scattered about.

"Help yaself t'some treats," the woman invited. Then she looked like someone goosed her. "Oh! But where _are_ my mannahs? We haven't been formally introduced. I'm Holly Windholm, nightingale of there here pawts. And who do I have the pleasure of bein' with this fine Hallow's Eve?"

She put out a slender hand and Kyle looked at it blankly for several seconds before reaching for it. "N-not. Kyle."

Holly's finely plucked brows drew together briefly. "Not Kyle? Well, Not Kyle, it's a- Oh!" His hand had met hers. "But you're cold as the grave, sug! Baptiste! Get mah boy here a drink t'warm his froze bones."

A skinny young man with reddish-brown hair and a black domino mask stirred and hauled himself off a couch with effort. The blue-haired guy who'd been leaning on him slumped horizontally into the spot he'd vacated. While Baptiste slowly put together a cocktail Holly worked on dividing some of the white powder on one of the mirrors.

"So, Not-Kyle," she smiled. "I haven't seen you around Lafitte's before. You visitin' the Crescent City? Or have you been avoidin' our li'l fam'ly?"

She sniffed up one of the lines then offered the multicolored straw to the gore-covered young man. He stared at it. After a few seconds she shrugged and inhaled the second line. She pinched her nose and rubbed it quite a bit. Then she smiled again. By that time Baptiste had a cup of something ready and he shoved it directly into Kyle's hand. He looked at it then he looked at her.

"S-sing," he managed to say. He wanted it to come out more of a question but words were still very difficult to push out over his clumsy tongue.

She looked at him curiously. Then she smiled, showing straight, pearly teeth and a faint dimple in one cheek. "A command performance from m'newest fan," she said. There was a rustling from the couches as a couple of the slumped partygoers tried to chuckle. "All right. Let's see... How about..."

She cleared her throat softly, had a swig directly from the nearest bottle of vodka and then began to sing.

_T'was on one bright March morning I bid New Orleans adieu _  
_ And I took the rode to Jackson town, me fortune to renew _  
_ I cursed all foreign money, no credit could I gain _  
_ Which filled me heart with longin' for the Lakes of Pontchartain. _

_ I stepped on board of a railroad car beneath the morning sun _  
_ And I rode the roads 'til evening and I laid me down again _  
_ All strangers here, no friends to me 'til a dark girl towards me came _  
_ And I fell in love with a Creole girl from the Lakes of Pontchartrain. _

_ I said my pretty Creole girl, me money here's no good _  
_ If it weren't for the alligators I'd sleep out in the wood _  
_ You're welcome here kind stranger, our house it's very plain _  
_ But we never turn a stranger out at the Lakes of Pontchartrain. _

_ She took me to her mummy's house and she treated me quite well _  
_ The hair upon her shoulders in jet black ringlets fell _  
_ To try and paint her beauty I'm sure t'would be in vain _  
_ So handsome was my Creole girl from the Lakes of Pontchartrain. _

_ I asked her if she'd marry me, she'd said it could never be _  
_ For she had got another and he was far at sea _  
_ She said that she would wait for him and true she would remain _  
_ 'Til he returned for his Creole girl from the Lakes of Pontchartrain. _

_ So fair thee well me bonny o' girl I never see no more _  
_ But I'll ne'er forget your kindness and the cottage by the shore _  
_ And at each social gathering a flowin' glass I'll raise _  
_ And drink a health to me Creole girl from the Lakes of Pontchartrain._

By the time she'd reached the final verses, several of the sluggish people on the couches were singing along, though not nearly with the dulcet tones the pro gave the sweet old song. The song lanced at Kyle's borrowed heart and brought strong thoughts of Zoe to the forefront of his thoughts. And when Holly stopped singing he could feel fresh, hot wetness dripping off his chin. He turned and staggered away, back out the door and down the hall. He heard the woman call after him in surprise and confusion but he didn't stop. He plowed through the crowd, losing the cup in the process as he'd forgotten he had it in his hand when he shoved an oversized Cat in the Hat (and little else) out of his way.

He reached the street and looked around desperately but he didn't know where he was going. He wasn't even sure where he wanted to go anymore. He just wanted the feelings inside to stop. He wanted to find a place where he could be at peace. And that wasn't to be found in the boisterous gaiety of Bourbon Street.

He pushed through the masses and found his way to the back streets, where he could smell the river. The darkness soothed him and as the noise from the Vieux Carré faded behind him he felt better. He could let his thoughts shut down again because he really didn't want to think. He knew everything was very wrong and that there was nothing he could do about it and that was too big, too scary to deal with on his own.

So he walked. He walked until he found himself at St. Louis #1. The side gate creaked faintly as he let himself in. He trudged down walkway after narrow walkway, past the stone houses of the dead. He kept going till he reached the end of the dirt trail and went over to the above ground tomb that was nearest. A weeping cherub perched above the gate that led into it. He tried to open the black iron gate but it was locked. He grabbed hold of it with both hands and pulled as hard as he could, yelling like he'd yelled when he'd chased off the Halloween bandits.

The gate's old lock squealed in protest and gave. The gates were open. Breathing heavily, he trudged inside. There was only one sarcophagus in the small tomb, flat and marked with the name of the person buried there. Kyle climbed up on top of it and curled up in a fetal position. A few more tears rolled over the dried blood on his face and he shut his eyes.

* * *

Author's Note:

A whole episode without Kyle. Tragedy! So. Here's my take on what he was doing while everyone else was coping with their own problems.

I dropped a lot of local vernacular in this chapter without intent. It's something that comes naturally after spending a lot of time there back in the 90's. Let's see... 'yat' comes from "Where y'at?", a greeting typical among a certain cultural archetype in New Orleans. Vieux Carré ("old square" - pronounced View Carray or Voo Carray if you're a yat) is the original local name for the French Quarter and dates back to when Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville established the town. Baptiste, Holly's lackey, is a nod to the man as well. Café Lafitte in Exile is the oldest gay bar in the USA. The song Holly sang is called _The Lakes of Pontchartrain_ (pronounced 'Punchatrain' when you're not singing that song). I recommend either the Slainte or Bob Dylan version. I probably made some other cultural references in there that I'm forgetting now. It's late when I'm posting this so I please forgive any oversights, spelling errors or redundancies. I will fix them when I have time.

I sure hope next week's episode gives poor Kyle some face time. He's got some major dead-boy issues to sort out. I've been largely relying on Frankenstein to figure out how Kyle's spending his time. If you're familiar with the story, you might have caught that already.

If Zoe turns that new power of hers on him, I may have to do something dire and AU-ish. I haven't been following him around for weeks just to see her turn him into fertilizer. Even if he thinks that's what he wants right now.

Okay. That's it for this week. Check out my other American Horror Story fanfic via my Profile if you want something to fill the wait with. It's up to Episode 10 now and Tate's finally dealt with the Westfield crowd. More or less.


	5. Chapter 5 - Chained

Kyle drooped in the chains that bound him to the wall of the greenhouse. Up until then it had been easier not to think. But, alone and restrained as he was, all he had to keep him company were his thoughts. They were muddy, indistinct and mostly formed of feeling with flashes of images that didn't quite tie together.

He'd spent the night in the cemetery. He woke to a nutria - the bayou's giant river rat - sniffing around his legs. The thing was as big as a housecat and it hissed like a gator when he sat up suddenly. He yelled back at it and his left leg kicked it hard. The rodent slammed into the concrete wall of the tomb and fell to the floor. It didn't move after that.

His next foggy memory was the swamp. He tried but couldn't piece together how he'd gotten out into the bayou. He had a vague impression of pigs and a fat man in a red flannel shirt carrying an old-fashioned scythe but he wasn't sure how that related to anything. And after that was Misty's shack.

He'd tried to talk to her but the words were still getting stuck somewhere between his scrambled brain and his tongue. He wanted her to understand that he needed her help but all she'd cared about was the way he smelled. The first time she'd cleaned him, he was still too numb to think at all, let alone resist. But so recently after the ordeal with his mother, he couldn't handle the feel of her hands on him. Touching him in places he didn't want to be touched. He tried to find the word he'd used to make his mother go away but he couldn't find it. It had sunk back down into the bog that was his mind.

He still couldn't find that word. He knew it. It was a simple word. He wanted to use it very badly.

He tugged on the chains. Zoe had used the strongest she could find - the ones that had bound Delphine Lalaurie in her coffin for so many years. They were meant to keep the worst of the worst contained. They were chains fit for a monster. The modern-day Prometheus, bound not to a rock but in a musty shed where he couldn't do or harm anything.

Kyle grunted and pulled. The iron length of chain rattled. The manacles bit into the arms that he was beginning to accept as his own. He pulled until he exhausted himself. Then he sank back against the wooden support beam and whimpered. He didn't understand why he was chained. He didn't understand why he was alone. He'd gone all the way to Misty's cabin because he thought she would lead him back to Zoe and, in an indirect way, she had. But Zoe had left him. Again.

She was the only thing that could make him more than he was. It was one of the only things he was sure of. If he could just be near her, the same energy she'd used to bring his stitched-together body to life would heal him. Maybe even make it so he could say more words and think clearer thoughts. He felt better when she was close by. Her attempt to play God had made him the Adam of her witchy world but he wanted no Eve but her. And she wouldn't have him. The repeated rejection confused and dismayed him.

When she'd fastened the cuffs on him he'd tried again to speak, to tell her how much he needed her to complete him; to help him grow from his newborn state into something greater. Something she could love. He tried so very hard to force the thoughts that were sailing around inside his skull out through his throat but all he could do was grunt. And she hadn't understood that.

His head was bumping against the post. Bump-bump-bump. It soothed him somewhat but not as much as rocking would. But he couldn't rock himself. The way he was chained prevented that. He could sit, barely, but that left his arms high up over his head and that felt worse than standing. He tried it a couple of times to be sure but it didn't get better. He bumped his head harder as his anxiety level increased. Even the nutria was better company than what he had now. He was alone and getting scared as more thoughts oozed in.

What if she never let him go? What if she never came back? He had no idea where he was. After she and Misty made a living dead girl they took her away and left him alone. Misty was mad at him. He'd broken her music. He hadn't done it deliberately. It had just been noise to him at the time, when he was freaking out. Silencing it had been necessary.

He whined and stopped bumping his head. It wasn't really helping. Hot wetness slid down his cheeks and dripped off his jaw. He didn't associate it with his anxiety. He barely even noticed it. The anxiety knotted up inside him, growing and heating up. He couldn't stay chained. He couldn't. It was worse than anything - even baths.

Kyle's whining got progressively more gravelly, morphing into something between a wail and a growl. He pulled on the chains harder, leaning his full weight into the effort. It was beginning to get uncomfortable, the pressure on his wrists, but he didn't stop. The growl escalated to a yell and he threw himself forward, straining with all his might.

Then one of the links of the black chain started to weaken.

...

* * *

Author's Note:

Well, we got a little Kyle face-time in there. And *ahem* some other parts of Kyle as well. Or, as the Blue Man Group puts it: His second face. But things have not improved for the blond reanimated college boy. Zoe has more important things to worry about than her undead creation running amok. She should be more attentive. But teens will be teens. And she has a new dead person to look after, one that can talk.

As with previous chapters, this one is both speculative and involving a bit of guesswork. So far it's panning out pretty well so I'm just going to keep running with it. I'm letting Frankenstein and previous AHS storytelling be my guides. References to Prometheus and Adam come directly from Frankenstein. Living Dead Girl was a B horror film and also a Rob Zombie song.

Trivia fact: Around 2000-ish the governing body of New Orleans encouraged citizens to hunt nutria (the giant swamp rats) for food both to help feed the impoverished backsliders and to cut back on the rodent problem. There were so many of the giant rodents, they were clogging up the canals. But then Katrina came and swept 'em all out into the sea.

If you're liking this story, check out my ongoing American Horror Story - Season 1.5. You can find the episodes in my Profile.


	6. Chapter 6 - Beauties and the Beast

...

He couldn't feel the chain start to give - Kyle was distracted. The cuff and taut iron links had exposed a mark on his arm that he couldn't ignore. The tiny shamrock fused with a peace sign didn't belong to him. It belonged to someone else. Seeing it brought flashes of memories from a time not so long ago but so very far away from his present state. It was an undeniable sign that he wasn't himself - and never would be again. The tattoo on his leg was further proof.

No, not his leg. That leg belonged to one of his buddies. And the arm belonged to another of his friends. It was not Kyle's.

_No, no! This isn't right! This isn't real! Oh, God, what's happened to me?_

The words wouldn't come out, though he tried to yell them with all the might of the anxiety that fueled them.

And then Zoe was there.

He calmed a little, tried to ask her why things were the way they were. She accused him of killing his mother and it tore him apart inside that he couldn't find the words to tell her what had happened, though he tried. And while he had trouble expressing himself, he had no trouble understanding the gun that she held.

The struggle that followed was a blur to him. He didn't really know how he managed to get the gun from her but he clutched it tightly to his chest - the chest that wasn't his. Suddenly the power to choose was in his hands. It was the first real choice he'd had since he woke up in the towel place. The morgue.

Zoe had said he died. She'd said he'd been brought back. He'd had no choice in that but he had a choice with the gun and he went to exercise it. But then Zoe was there. She decided for him, just as she had from the beginning. He sobbed into her shoulder as she held him. He didn't understand. He thought she was going to shoot him but then she was stopping him doing it to himself. He wasn't sure if his lack of comprehension was because of his mixed up parts or because of her. He suspected it was his fault. Dying had turned his brain to mush. It's why the words wouldn't come out.

...

"F...ui...d"

He knew the word and he knew that was not it. But it was close enough to the real thing that Zoe moved on to the next card. He knew she was trying to help him. She understood that his words were stuck in his head and she was trying her best to help him get them out.

But then she showed a card and said, "Bed."

Kyle didn't like bed. The one in the photo looked too much like the bed where his mother had stolen his innocence. He slapped the card away and felt better for it. But the action confused Zoe. He felt stupid. That was a word he could say. It figured.

Zoe tried to console him but he wouldn't hear it. He tried to feed himself but that only made him feel more stupid. He didn't really need to eat and trying only pissed him off. He got rid of the food that he couldn't say and couldn't eat. He was panting with the force of his emotions. He barely noticed the arrival of the other girl. He was only aware that Zoe was leaving him again.

Then Madison touched him. He knew she was there then. It freaked him out a little, her fingers on his borrowed skin. But she was so gentle with her approach and her voice so soft and mellow, he felt like he had when he'd heard the performer sing on Halloween. The things she said, some of them were lost somewhere between his ears and his brain but he knew a kindred spirit when one held him. It was the acceptance that he'd been yearning for. They cried on each other for a bit, hugging and weeping.

Then hugging turned to kissing and it wasn't like his mother at all. Madison's lips were cool, faintly stiff but pliant. She smelled of expensive perfume and death. She led the dance but he followed willingly. When the kisses turned hot she tried to urge him over to the bed but he still didn't trust the thing. He fucked her against the bureau instead, plowing into her with a fervor that encompassed all the rage and fear and darkness that had been building up inside him since he was resurrected.

He was Vesuvius and he'd found a way to vent that couldn't hurt anyone because the only people it involved were beyond life. Beyond pain. When it was over she tried to lead him to the bed again. This time, he let her.

When she left him it was with a promise that she would find Zoe and bring her back. And for the first time since he'd died, he didn't feel panic when he was left alone. Sitting on the bed, he felt more at peace than he had in days. It was like those moments in Misty's shack when she sang softly to him as she smeared cool mud on his burning stitches. The frantic buzz of confusion, fear, anger and despair was temporarily gone. The numbness that followed was a blessing to him. Madison, medicine. He smiled slightly. Then he sat there and did nothing. And it was good.

When Madison returned, she was true to her word: She had Zoe with her. The brown-haired girl was wet, in a towel, and even from the bed he could smell death on her. It comforted him.

The dead blonde girl came and sat beside him. She kissed his cheek and it gave him that same cool sense of calm from before. The little smile teased his lips again. Finally, things were making sense. Madison said words to Zoe and held her hand out. Kyle understood that. He could tell Zoe was listening to her. He used Madison's example as his guide and put out his hand as well, reaching for her in a clumsy, clingy way that wasn't the upward palm invitation the girl beside him offered but was just as appealing.

In witchcraft, there is power in three. And that night the three young supernaturals proved it.

...

He lay awake for a long time afterward, wedged between the two young witches while they dozed. He enjoyed the the calm. It was like a dream. He hoped it wasn't one. He hoped he really was there and not still chained in the shed. That lingering fear made him reluctant to join the girls in slumber.

But sleep finally stole over him whether he wanted it or not.

At first the dream that came was pleasant. He was on spring break, living the high life in some fancy hotel. His frat brothers were there and Zoe and Madison too. He and the girls went down to the hotel spa to indulge in some massage and pampering. Zoe was let through by the attendant but when Kyle tried to pass they wouldn't let him. The attendant said the service was for the elite guests only.

He tried to warn Madison but his words were stuck in his head still. He couldn't tell her. But the attendant did. He thought he saw a chance to duck into the spa while the attendant was arguing with Madison, who was insisting that she _was_ elite. But he couldn't bring himself to go, knowing she would be stuck on the outside by herself. He had to choose whether to follow Zoe, who had left him again, or stay with Madison.

It was a great source of anxiety for him. It turned the pleasant dream quickly into a nightmare. It made him twitch and whimper in his sleep. He startled awake, wild eyed and unsure of where he was. But then he heard a girl's voice shushing him. He felt a soft hand pet his messy hair. The scent of lotion and perfume and death surrounded him. And he felt peace again.

...

* * *

Author's Note:

If Dr. Frankenstein had a threesome with his monster and the creature that would become the bride of his monster, I think I would have read the book a lot sooner in life.

That said, I have a bad feeling about how things will end up. I've never known a menage a trois that managed to bloom into a successful, abiding relationship. Of course I've never known one between two witches and a dead guy either. So maybe they'll buck the odds. But I just have a feeling there's going to be some problems if Kyle ever manages to learn to speak his mind.

And then there's the issue of what'll happen when Cordelia discovers the dead frat boy. Because with her gift and his tendency to freak out, it's only a matter of time before she learns that there's a dead frat boy in the house.


	7. Chapter 7 - Language Barrier

...

Kyle hated the talking game, even though he understood that it was teaching him things. It was a bossy, annoying thing with a voice that didn't sound even slightly human. It was condescending and when his clumsy, borrowed fingers accidentally hit the wrong area of the touch screen, it treated him like he was an idiot.

But he was no idiot. Behind the barrier of speech and communication was a roller coaster of thoughts, zipping around at high speed, taking sharp and unexpected curves, looping back around and upside down. He felt things in his head he'd never sensed before, such as the presence of something he didn't understand: a mind-magnet that tried to pull his thoughts right out of his head. He'd felt it all along, ever since Zoe had brought him to the house, but had been subconsciously blocking it. He still was blocking it but now he was aware of that block - and he welcomed the shelter from the prying force.

Kyle spent long hours alone in the house and he didn't understand why. He could sense that Zoe and Madison weren't as happy as they'd first seemed after Zoe's towel hit the floor. He didn't understand that either. He didn't understand why she seemed so reluctant to touch more while Madison seemed too eager. He didn't resist the undead girl's advances but he could tell that it had less to do with him and more to do with Zoe and that confused him even more. It didn't feel as nice, kissing her, when he could sense that she was proving something to herself; proving something to Zoe.

He didn't understand the nuances of the girls' relationship nor did he care. He didn't even care about the talking game in his lap. But Zoe was so insistent that it would help him reach her on a level she could understand, he felt compelled to stick with it even though he wanted to throw the laptop across the room. It was more important to him to show her through his dedication that he wasn't the monster she had feared he was. He wanted to use words to reach her in ways his primitive gestures just couldn't. He wanted to tell her that he loved her and she had nothing to fear.

For hours he plugged away at the irritating program, muttering words to himself; making connections and rebuilding synaptic links at supernatural speed. And still, for him, it was far too slow. Even when he could string together basic sentences it felt clunky. Alien. Just like his body did.

He rested for a short time, though it wasn't deliberate. Sensory overload took its toll and he had to let his overclocked gray matter absorb some of what it took in before he could pound the blocked pathways some more. He didn't sleep or even nap; not in any sense a normal young adult knew. It was closer to narcoleptic power-down a toddler might experience after a busy morning. He didn't even set the laptop aside. He just shut his eyes and went still where he sat.

The images that blurred through his mind while he was processing the motherlode of information was similar to a dream. He was on the run through a world that seemed familiar but so strange at the same time. He knew the things he saw should be familiar and they were, vaguely, but with differences so subtle that he couldn't tell what was different or wrong about them. Those things were gone before he had a chance to look closely. Faces, places, events: They all zoomed together while he, the spectator, charged through the back alleys, peeking in the windows and over fences, grazing on information half-seen and half-heard.

Then a hard wind began to blow, howling and rattling the branches of trees around him. He realized he'd found his way back to the swamp. The wind grew more fierce as he delved deeper into the bayou. Eventually he came to a small house that looked a lot like the swamp shack from his earliest clear memories. He still felt badly for breaking Misty's Stevie so even though he knew there were people after him, he slowed down and steered toward the shack. He noticed that the old wooden support beams were gone. In their place were legs; bird legs, long and skinny and as knobbly as any water cypress. Giant claws dug into the ground to root the shack against the rise and fall of the river.

He let himself in and looked around. The shack's interior looked similar to the one he remembered but tidier. There were curtains in the windows, tied back with cord, and there were colorful rugs on the floor and lining the walls. There were several animals there as well but none of them moved and they all stared at him with unblinking eyes: A white wolf, a big black bear and large crow.

"Добрый вечер," a voice croaked from near the antique pot-belly stove. "Как поживаете?"

Kyle turned toward the source and saw a woman who looked even older than the stove she was near. She sat in an old tall-backed rocking chair and was knitting something from a red ball of yarn that sat atop several other yarn balls. Kyle wondered where Misty was; he knew the old lady in the head scarf and black dress was not Misty.

"Зачем вы пришли сюда?" the old woman said and her blue eyes glittered with keen insight, like she already knew the answer to the question Kyle couldn't understand. _"_Где вы собираетесь пойти?"

Kyle shook his head and tried to tell her he didn't understand her but he couldn't find the right words. So he shook his head again and made a helpless face.

"You are in danger," the woman said with a heavy Russian accent. "Only the foolish and the desperate find Baba Yaga."

She set her knitting needles down then, reached into her basket of yarn and pulled something out. She tossed it to him and his instincts kicked in. He caught the thing like a football pass, then he looked at it.

It was a small human skull. Disgusted and confused, he looked from it to the old witch by the stove. She cackled and started to knit again. Kyle could see now that her basket was filled with skulls beneath the yarn and within the oven more bones made the kindling for her fire.

"You will need that," she said, nodding to the skull in his hands. "Don't lose it or you will be sorry."

Kyle turned and fled the hut though he kept the little skull, mostly because he didn't know what else to do with it. Behind him he heard a wet, slushy sucking sound and he looked back in time to see the house uproot itself and head deeper into the swamp on its bird legs, in the opposite direction he was going. He watched in shocked amazement till the house was out of sight. Then he started to run again. He knew Baba Yaga was right: There were people after him and if they caught him, it would be the end of him.

Kyle startled back into full consciousness when gunshots rang out in the house next door but the sounds were muffled by the headphones Zoe had put on him. He didn't know what had woke him; he thought it might be the dream. So he went back to poking at the talking game. It was as condescending and inflexible as before. But he was learning.

* * *

Author's Note:

Baba Yaga is an old crone of a witch from Russia. Legend has it that she eats small children. She might be the inspiration behind the witch in Hansel and Gretel, though she never had a tasty house. Her house was a creature unto itself; not haunted but certainly aware and animated. I have a feeling she's the one Constance referred to in the most recent episode of Coven so I couldn't resist bringing her in for a cameo.

As for the trio, it looks like things aren't going so smoothly for them. I'm going to try to work in another little update later this week, before the next show, to shed some more light on that situation so keep watching!


	8. Chapter 8 - Familiar

...

Kyle had mastered the talking game so Zoe had given him a Leapfrog handheld device with more advanced games on it. He didn't dislike it as much; he didn't feel so thick and slow with it, now that he'd conquered the first game. He even found that he was enjoying the challenges the changing format had.

"Hi, sweetie," Madison said breezily as she settled beside him on the hardwood floor.

He grunted acknowledgement but didn't stop poking at the game. She watched him for a couple of seconds, waiting for him to look up. When it became clear he wasn't going to, she reached for the handheld device. He made a louder grunt, in protest, then remembered to use his words.

"No!" he said and he turned so that his back was to her. He hunched protectively over the game and kept playing.

Madison gave an exasperated sigh. "You're turning into a fucking pixel-junkie."

Zoe came into the room then, dressed to go out. Madison looked up at her unhappily.

"All he ever wants to do is play that stupid game," she complained.

Zoe shrugged and glanced around the room, searching for something comforting to say. "He's just going through a phase," she said. "You should be glad he's catching on so quickly."

"Yeah," grumped Madison. She got up off the floor and smoothed her dress. "At this rate he'll be hooked on Dora the Explorer in no time." She turned and looked down at the undead college boy where he crouched over his game. "We're leaving. Don't you want a kiss goodbye?"

Kyle grunted again but didn't even look at her. Irritated, she turned on a heel and marched out into the hall. "Great idea, Zoe," Madison said sourly. "Really fucking great. At least he'd be horny if you gave him porn to watch."

While Madison tromped down the stairs, Zoe lingered longer in the room, watching the boy they'd pieced together. She didn't really mind his fascination with the game. She really did feel it was a phase and she was rather proud of him for advancing so quickly. She was confident he wouldn't remain a semi-mute half-wit for long.

"'Bye, Kyle," she said gently.

He looked up then with a look of faint confusion. He scooted closer to her, keeping the game in one hand. She crouched down and smoothed his wild hair with her hands.

"We'll be back soon," promised Zoe. "We have to go see Nan. She's with Luke at the hospital."

He didn't really understand any of that but it didn't matter. Her reassurances made him feel better. When Zoe had said she would be back in the past, she always came back. He gave her a little smile then looked back to his game. Zoe watched him for a few seconds longer then Madison's impatient call from the base of the stairs prompted her to leave.

…

Kyle was still playing his game when Fiona found him. He wouldn't have paid her much mind but her dog came right over to him and started licking his face in a funny, tickly way. He happily identified the creature by its species and gave her an affectionate hug back, not noticing what Fiona was saying to him. He gave the dog a squeeze, accidentally breaking her neck. She twitched a couple of times then went limp.

"Oh!" Kyle exclaimed, dismayed. He gave the dog a shake but she wouldn't wake up. "Oh… no. No, dog. Wake… up."

Fiona crossed the floor at a slow pace, giving thoughtful consideration to the boy. At first she'd taken him for a regular young man but on closer examination she could detect the witchcraft on him.

"She's not gonna wake up," she said without sympathy or sorrow. "You broke her neck. Which, I must say, is mighty impressive. It's not every man who can kill a familiar so easily."

Fiona knelt down, elegantly keeping her unmentionables covered despite the less than delicate position she assumed. She took the boy's face in her hands and gave him a real good look. He looked back at her, confused and still dismayed by the dog's stillness. She could see the decay in his face and smell it on him.

"What's your name?" she asked.

He looked at her and tears rose in his eyes. He dropped the dog's body and tried to push her hands away. She let him go. He scooted back, animal-like, and curled into himself. He hadn't meant to break the dog. He had only wanted to return her generous affection.

"Don't worry about her," Fiona dismissed. "Everyone makes mistakes. Some of us just make mistakes that kill." She understood that all too well.

He sniffled and looked at her over a shoulder. She came closer. She had a presence about her that was like Zoe and Madison, something he had no idea how to define in his mind but it comforted him. He uncurled a little and looked at her mournfully.

"What did they do to you?" said Fiona. And then it hit her. "You're one of those college boys. Son of a bitch."

She moved even closer and extended her hands to him. He looked up at her, not sure if he should trust her or not. She smiled kindly and he decided it would be all right. He put his hands in hers and found her grip warm and gentle. She helped him to his feet.

"It's all right," she said soothingly. She released one of his hands and ran hers over his forehead and then down his cheek, gentle and soft. "Amateurs brought you back but I can have you right as rain. You just… have to trust me. Can you do that?"

He wasn't clear on what it was she was asking but he felt compelled to go along with it, unaware that she was already working her magic on him. He nodded and her smiled turned radiant.

"Wonderful. Now just… close your eyes for a moment. No peeking!"

He did as she instructed, brows arched high as he tried to guess what her game was. She leaned in close - almost close enough to kiss - and blew a warm, sweet-smelling breath into his nose and between his parted lips. His brows scrunched together but he kept his eyes shut. Then he felt his insides begin to tingle, starting with his brain.

The fog over his thoughts thinned dramatically; it was like a shroud had been lifted as the neural paths restored and life returned to portions of his brain that had died. His eyes flew open and he stared at the witch in shock and wonder. For the first time since his death he could think without a huge struggle. And his first thought was:

"Who are you?"

She smiled and patted his cheek lightly. "Your fairy godmother," she joked dryly. Then, more seriously: "I'm Fiona Goode, the Supreme of the coven that gave you life."

He put his hand over hers, a move that spoke silent volumes of gratitude. "Thank you."

Her smile parted to show pearly white, straight teeth. "You're welcome, darlin'. Now why don't we go downstairs? There's a lot you need to know."

She laced her fingers with his and gently tugged him toward the door. He followed. Her restorative magic had come with a little more. Lagniappe, that's what the Cajun witches would call it: A bonus spell that rode atop the original. It was a simple twist of magic that bound the blond boy to the coven and, more specifically, to Fiona, just like the spell she'd placed on the dog he'd killed. Spalding would get rid of the creature, she knew. She had more important work to do. She had to train the household's new guardian.

…

For Kyle the transition from half-wit to bound servant was a blessing. It felt good to sit at a table again; to have a real conversation. He told Fiona what little he could remember about his resurrection and the days that followed. His memories were hazy, though, fragmented by the poor way his brain had been working. But he remembered his mother and what he'd done to her.

"Why?" was all Fiona said when he told her about the trophy and the brain bits. She didn't seem upset or judgmental.

"She did… bad things to me," he said, tearing up again. He didn't want to get specific but he knew it might be necessary if she was to understand the why.

But it wasn't needed. Fiona was smart and could read between the lines. "Well," she said in a dismissive manner. "We all do what we have to in order to survive."

Though simple and some might think heartless, her words comforted him. It poked a hole in his emotional dam and he really broke down then, crying in a very unmanly fashion. She took pity on him and hugged his head and let him sob on her shoulder for a few moments while she stroked his unwashed hair.

"There, now," she said after she felt he'd gone on long enough. "Pull yourself together." She gently urged him upright and she brushed her thumbs over his cheeks to dry them. She looked him in the eye. "You've got a new life now, here, with us. You'll look out for us and we'll look out for you. That's the way it works here."

He nodded and even managed a smile. In the brief hours he'd spent with her she'd already been more the mom he'd always wanted than his real one ever seemed to be.

"Do you know how to play cards?" she asked and when he nodded she smiled again. "I'll give you some money and you can show me how well you remember."

* * *

Author's Note:

I intended to do something a little different with my latest update but last night's show made me derail. I had to know how things rolled out between Fiona and Kyle. Such a huge leap forward in his progress deserved a little more attention in my book, so to speak. As with many facets of Season 3, I couldn't help relating Kyle and Fiona to Tate and Constance in the first series. It's a strange mother-son sort of relationship here but I think it'll work for them.

Coven is over for the year but I'll still post updates to this story over the next two weeks, though it may take things into wild AU territory. I'm willing to risk it for the sake of keeping the story warm. Now that Kyle can function better, there's all kinds of stuff I can play with. I hope you like where it goes and I also hope it doesn't stray too far from the path the show's beating. Forgive me in advance if it does. My stories have a tendency to go in directions even I can't predict.


	9. Chapter 9 - New Life

...

It was late but Kyle was awake. He had his hands folded over his chest and gazed steadily at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to come. A long stream of moonlight stretched across the plain white ceiling, bright and silvery in the darkness. It bathed everything in the stark room with pale blue light.

The door to the hall creaked open and Madison slipped in, decked out in a fancy ivory lace nightgown that flowed elegant and sexy from her hips and hugged snug in the bodice. She had a wide black velvet choker over her throat to hide the mark left by Fiona's blade. She smiled when Kyle turned his head to look at her.

"Hey," she said quietly and came over to his bed.

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked at her. She sat down beside him. She looked like she was going to say something more for just an instant but then she just leaned in and kissed him. He kissed back but her neediness was strange; clingy. It reminded him of the way his mother had behaved the last time he saw her. Combined with their present location, the thought was enough to make Kyle push her away.

She frowned, hurt. "What's the matter with you?" she demanded, quiet but angry. She had wanted to feel; her recent experiences had certainly given her that though in ways she didn't wholly appreciate. "What, am I not _good_ enough for you now? Do you know how many guys would kill to be in your position?"

Despite the fact that he could talk now, Kyle didn't know how to explain it to her. He would have had difficulty trying even if he was working with a normal set of brains. "I'm tired," he lied.

"We don't get tired," she refuted.

Madison was assuming based on her experience as the living dead but she was mostly right: Kyle didn't get tired the way a normal living person did. When he chose to sleep it was more like shutting down than drifting off. Doing it never made him feel very invigorated afterward but he'd learned to enjoy some of his dreams.

"I do," he said. "I want to sleep."

The blonde girl frowned at him. Her hollowed eyes flashed. "You're mine as much as hers! I helped make you too, you know."

His brows furrowed under his messy fringe. "I don't belong to either of you."

She eyed him up and down. She wanted him to tell her that he loved her, like he had to Zoe, but she knew this wasn't the path to getting that. She pulled a breath and forced it back out in a sigh. "I thought you liked me, Kyle." Madison turned her head away, playing up the wounded girl bit.

He watched her performance. He knew there was real emotion behind it though it was overdone. "I do like you. I just don't like it when you act like… that."

"Like what?" she said. She looked at him with moist eyes. "Like I want you? I can't help it."

He made a little frown. Her ploy was working a little. He did feel for her. But he also didn't want her in his bed. "I don't like it in bed."

She made a face at that, not comprehending and not really caring. "So let's go fuck in the shower. Like I care."

"How about you go back to your own room," Fiona said from the doorway.

Madison got up, slowly and uncertainly. The old bat had killed her once. This both angered and disturbed the teen; it made her think twice about talking back to the Supreme.

"Go on, now," the older woman said. She was dressed in a long black nightgown reminiscent of the ones from the 30s black and white drama films. "The last thing we need right now is more teen angst." She swept the younger woman with a critical look as Madison passed on her way out into the hall. "At least we're not likely to have any unexpected pregnancies."

Fiona continued to linger in the doorway till Madison had gone back to her own room. Then the Supreme said to the patched-together boy: "I'd be careful playin' love games with these girls. It could get you killed." She smirked faintly. "Again. And that'd be such a waste. I think you've got potential, Kyle."

She reached for the door handle. "Go to sleep now. Tomorrow I'll show you what I want you to do."

…

In the morning Fiona was as good as her word. She showed Kyle around the house and grounds and explained the areas that people and things were most likely to intrude through. She summarized the neighbors and showed him every way a person could get in and out of the house. It was all his to protect. It was his home now.

He didn't like the greenhouse. It reminded him of his arrival at the girls' school and how he'd been chained there. He was glad when they moved past it back to the kitchen. Delia was there, prepping the morning meal. Fiona immediately launched into a monologue about needing more kitchen help.

"This is the boy you mentioned," said Cordelia. She looked the young man over with her mismatched eyes. She was both impressed by the sheer talent it would have taken to bring him to life and the amazing amount of disregard for propriety. "I apologize for inconveniences of your condition. You're welcome in this house."

Kyle smiled at her and she returned the smile with one of her own. Then she went back to preparing breakfast. Fiona went back to complaining about the lack of servants. Kyle sat quietly at the table until food arrived. He smiled at Cordelia again. She smiled back again. Fiona watched the boy for a few moments till she was sure he was capable of serving himself scrambled eggs without dumping them on himself. He executed the task flawlessly, another stroke to her ego.

Zoe and Madison arrived at the same time and it was easy to see there was some irritation between them - more from Madison's end. They each took a chair on either side of Kyle who looked from one to the other then went back to eating his eggs.

"Where's Nan?" Cordelia asked, pausing between rounds of moving things to the table.

"Luke's mother threw her out of his room last night," Zoe explained. "She's pretty upset."

Fiona sighed. "I don't know why I had Misty bring that old bitch back. Sometimes my compassionate nature does get the better of me."

Tactfully, no one said anything to that claim.

"Good morning, darlings," Myrtle croaked from the doorway. She was decked out in a rose-print cloak and plain white underdress and her usual compliment of gloves and jewelry. She went over to where Kyle was sitting and peered at him over her glasses with keen interest. "Interesting. Same amazing work," she admired, knowing Misty Day's work intimately since she was also resurrected by the woman's power. "But someone could stand some sewing lessons."

Kyle hunched down a little and focused on his food. He didn't really feel the need to eat but, like sleep, it was something he preferred to do. It made him feel less strange. And it had a sense of satisfaction to it that he liked. He didn't understand much about the world so what felt good, he went with.

...

* * *

Author's Note:

This is a quickie-chapter I may add to later. It could probably stand some editing too but it's late Wednesday night and I wanted to get this up when AHS would normally run. After having several requests from different folks to go AU with this, I've decided to do just that. So if things happen here that don't in the show, or my story no longer ends up with the same dynamics or characters as the show, you'll know why. I hope you enjoy where things go from here.


	10. Chapter 10 - Boundaries

...

It was midday and Kyle was exploring the grounds of the school. It was cold out so he'd worn the dark brown turtleneck sweater Fiona had given him over a new pair of jeans she'd likewise distributed. He'd been all right with continuing to wear his flannel but she'd said it smelled bad and in general wanted him to dress tidier if he was going to stay with them. And he had to protect the place from intruders.

It was easy for him to remember what area was his: A sturdy old fence, tall and made of white bricks, separated their property from all others quite distinctly. It had rained recently which made everything damp and earthy-smelling. Kyle was checking out the way the rain clung to the leaves of a jasmine bush when he became aware that someone was watching him.

He looked over and saw Fiona standing in the shade of the covered porch with a cigarette in one hand. She wore a black floppy sunhat, a black satin bolero and knee-length dress. Large black sunglasses hid her eyes and much of her expression. Kyle lifted his chin in a form of silent greeting and she responded with a small smile. Then he went back to exploring the grounds.

The yard was an unusual place - half grass and half paved gardens, both of which had suffered in Spalding's physical absence. It didn't occur to Kyle to take over the role of groundskeeper. Technically he had memory of skills that could help and he knew where the yard tools were, but he simply didn't think to volunteer. But he did find the overgrown gardens fascinating. Delia grew all sorts of unusual plants out there and many witches before her had planted their share of odd greenery and dead pets.

Some of the markers for the latter were incredibly elaborate while others were merely stones with names painted on them. Kyle found the little graves and memorials interesting both in their presence and in the styles they evoked. Most were non-traditional in-ground burials and carried a touch of the culture of the girl who'd buried the critter. None bore crosses of any kind.

To Kyle's disappointment, none of the strange plants moved or tried to eat him. They just sat there being plants. He had seen and experienced so many bizarre things over the course of the past weeks he was beginning to expect the unusual. Fairy tales were real, in the worst way possible. But a moving plant would have been interesting.

He sat down on a weathered stone bench and looked down at his hands. They weren't his hands and yet they were. He didn't like looking at them and he glanced away quickly. When he didn't look at them they felt more like his own, especially since Fiona helped him with her magic. But he couldn't ignore the alien-ness when he saw the hands of two different dead guys at the ends of his sleeves.

He wondered if Fiona had some kind of magic that could make him look more like himself again.

He abandoned the bench, thinking to ask the witch, but she was gone from the porch when he emerged from the garden. He figured she'd gone back inside so he headed for the door. When he reached for the handle the door opened before he touched it. On the other side stood Madison, wearing a black pencil skirt paired with a gauzy black poet's shirt - low cut, laced up and light in defiance of the cold temperature outdoors. She wore a thick black velvet choker beaded with small rubies and a smile that didn't reach her haunted eyes. She had a little black pillbox hat with a thin web-like veil that hung over those dark eyes.

"She thinks you're a dog," she said in a lofty tone.

Kyle tipped his head. "Do you think that too?"

Madison was surprised. She blinked a few times and frowned. She still wasn't used to him talking, let alone asking direct questions. "I think you have some serious Florence Nightengale issues." She shrugged irritably at his blank look. "Where a patient falls in love with their nurse because she's the first thing they see when they feel better. You think you're in love with Zoe but you're not. She just happened to be the one who was there when you woke up. If she hadn't forgotten her phone she wouldn't have been there either."

He peered at her curiously. Her tone said she didn't really believe everything she was saying - which made him wonder why she said it.

"Let me tell you something else," the blonde girl went on when she didn't get a satisfactory reaction from the patchwork boy. "She doesn't love you either! She just feels bad for sewing you together from spare parts when she just should've left you for dead!"

He didn't understand why she wanted to be mean to him but tried not to hear what she was saying because he suspected she didn't really mean it. There was something else motivating her mood but he couldn't tell what. So he did the only thing that had worked for her in the past when she was upset: He tried to kiss her.

Madison almost let him touch her but she pulled away at the last moment. "You're so stupid!" she lashed out.

Part of her problem was she that was mad at him and Zoe for thinking they were in love; for dis-including her from their togetherness when she was the one who brought them all together. Then there was another part of her that derived a freakish sense of enjoyment simply from feeling _anything_. She hadn't felt much since she died and Kyle was at the root of all her strongest post-death feelings.

"I think you wish I was stupid," he said. He wasn't being accusing; just stating a fact.

That's when Nan stuck her head out of the house. "It's time to _go_," she told Madison insistently. Nan had on a black and gray velvet dress reminiscent of the ones Victorian baby dolls wore in the late 1800s - only hers had a skull motif worked into the fleur-de-lis lacing. The ribbon in her dark hair exactly matched the pattern of her dress. She looked impatient.

"Fine," Madison huffed and followed the other girl inside.

Kyle followed both of them as far as the front door, learning as he did that the girls were going to go back to the hospital so Nan could visit Luke. Zoe met up with them in the entryway. She was also dressed in black, a more simple outfit of a swingy knee-length skirt and a black jacket. She wore a black fedora. Together the girls looked ready for a funeral. Zoe paused to say goodbye to Kyle.

_She thinks you're a dog. _

Kyle had thought at the time that Madison meant Fiona but now he wondered if she had meant Zoe. He hugged the brown-haired girl. He could feel Madison's angry stare through the veil she wore. Nan sighed.

"Come _on_, you guys!"

Zoe gave him a quick kiss then the three witches were gone. The house seemed very quiet once the left. He knew there were at least three other witches still in the manor, along with a voodoo queen and at least one animated severed head. It was a deceptive silence that hung in the air.

Kyle paced the plain white halls till he came to the sitting room where all the portraits of the previous Supremes covered most of the wall space. It felt like some were actually looking at him. It made him uncomfortable so he left the room again.

He thought about the world beyond the walls of the academy. He knew the girls could come and go as they pleased but he wasn't sure if he could. Zoe had kept him chained up before and he didn't want to be chained again. Maybe she did think he was a dog.

It was hard to remember the world before the school. Things were a blur of impressions, sights and sounds. Life before the bus crash was even further away and more difficult to recall. He had dreams that were clearer.

He tried to remember life as Kyle Spencer but everything was jumbled up with bits of television and things he'd read. He could remember his mother but though her memory drew strong images and connections to his life, they were mostly bad memories. Memories he wished had been destroyed with everything else. He had the impression that he'd never really been allowed to just leave his home.

He looked at the front door and considered following the girls. He wouldn't mind knowing where the hospital was at, since the trio spent a lot of time there. He also kind of wanted to see Luke again. He felt badly for the guy: Death seemed to have a hard-on for him.

But even if Kyle left the house, he would return as he had no place to go. He was legally dead and would likely end up as an experiment if he turned himself over to authorities. He was far safer with the witches than anywhere else - even if there was a pack of witch hunters on their way, as Fiona had told him.

If what she said was true, and what Madame Laveaux said was true, Kyle knew he would be needed at the academy. If Hank's death at the salon was indeed as dire as they said, the coven was looking at having a second Inquisition on their doorstep.

In the end he opted to stay put and eventually Kyle settled in a small side parlor where a fire was dying in the hearth. He curled up on a couch near the fireplace and dozed for a bit.

…

"I want to stay at the hospital!" Nan exclaimed in the hall.

Kyle startled awake to the noisy return of the girls. He rose and went to the doorway where he could see all three of them looking at each other in concern and, in Nan's case, through tears.

"She tried to kill him!" said Nan. "I should be there with him!"

"They won't let anyone but the doctors get near him now," Madison reminded her, trying to be patient.

"I don't care! I want to sit in the hall!"

"Nan," Zoe said in a calm voice. "It's not safe for any one of us to be out in a public place alone. You know that. Luke's in good hands-"

"He would be better off here!" the upset girl insisted.

"Like that's going to happen," Madison scoffed, tiring of the debate. "Just ask Delia. Ask her if we can steal him from the hospital after his crazy mother tried to kill him. And you know she'll never let you camp out by yourself at the hospital."

"She's right," said Cordelia from the stairs.

They all looked to her, even Nan who sniffled and smeared her wet cheeks with her palms in an attempt to dry them.

"We should all stay indoors unless it's unavoidable, for the time being," the school's headmistress said in a cool, collected manner. "It's a necessary precaution."

"It's not fair!" Nan protested.

"No," Delia agreed. "It isn't. But life isn't fair. Right now we need to concentrate on shoring up our defenses and not waste energy feeling sorry for ourselves. Fiona and I have been trying to get in touch with some who might be able to assist us."

"Who?" asked Zoe, curious.

"I will introduce you to them when they are here," said Delia. "Right now you girls need to wash up and help with supper."

"God," swore Madison, rolling her eyes. "When are we going to hire some more help? I'm really sick of this servant shit."

"When we can find someone we can trust," said Delia simply.

"So have Nan read minds till we find someone," said Madison.

Nan favored her a less than pleasant look but didn't argue. It was something she was capable of.

"Maybe in time," Delia said. "One thing at a time, right now."

Zoe started for the stairs. She didn't mind helping around the house. She liked to cook and cleaning things always led to interesting discoveries.

Kyle followed after Zoe but wound up having to wait in the hall while she changed and cleaned up. It was modesty he didn't appreciate but she insisted Fiona wanted her to maintain. When she was done he followed her back downstairs and into the kitchen where he was told by everyone to go have a seat. They didn't even give him a chance to show them how much more refined his motor skills had grown. So he watched instead, and listened. He would show his usefulness soon enough.

...

* * *

Author's Note:

Merry Christmas! I was going to post this last night but got a server error. So it's a little late but here. Not too exciting this time but I'm going to throw in some bad guys and some reserve troops soon just because I've decided to go all AU with this, as was intimated in the sub-text. More on that soon!


	11. Chapter 11 - Mirror

...

_I listened to _Pretty Face (FETT remix) _by Soley while writing this chapter._

* * *

"You have to bathe, Kyle," Zoe insisted. "You smell bad. Seriously."

They were both in the second floor bathroom. She was trying to be gentle and understanding but he had crowded himself up against the cabinet and as far away from the tub as he could get without actually leaving the room.

"I don't want to," he said without even looking at the tub. "I hate baths."

"Then take a shower," she said.

"No!" he said too loudly, to drive back thoughts of his mother and the towel.

"What is your deal about bathing?" Zoe asked, perplexed. She thought about touching him but he was acting pretty feral. She wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't smack her hand if she reached for him.

"I don't like it," he reiterated. He shifted and hugged his middle.

Zoe kept between him and the door to the hall.

"Look at me, Kyle," she coaxed. "You can trust me."

He looked at her through his messy hair, pained and unhappy. "It's not- about. You." He looked longingly at the door but he didn't want to shove her out of the way to get to it. "I have… bad memories."

"Of what?" asked Zoe. She wasn't going to let it go. "What happened?"

He suffered several nasty flashes of graphic memories and flinched. "My mother," he said haltingly. He was having no trouble now with finding the words. Saying them was what was difficult. "She did… bad things. To me."

Zoe remembered the night she'd found him in his mother's house, all spattered in gore and clutching the bloodied trophy. "Is that why… why you killed her?"

Kyle hugged himself tighter. He really didn't want to remember that night. He started rocking in place. A tear trickled quickly down one cheek. "I… told her. No." He'd said it repeatedly, in fact - with every blow he rained on her head with the trophy. "With everything… I couldn't. I couldn't go. Back to that."

_I know your body, Kyle._

She'd known it more intimately than anyone, even himself. He crumpled a bit as he fought back the urge to curl up and cry on the floor. Zoe reached to stroke his cheek but he flinched away, leaving her cupping his ear.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, settling for his ear. "I'm so sorry, Kyle. I didn't know." She felt kind of dumb saying that. Of course she hadn't known. She wasn't so cruel as to knowingly leave someone she cared about with someone like that. "God. I can't believe how stupid I was. I'm so sorry."

He blinked more tears as he looked at her. "I know." He wouldn't say it was okay because none of it was okay. "Can we… just not. Talk about it?"

"Yeah, sure," said Zoe. "Yeah." She hugged him and while he didn't hug back, he didn't resist either. After a moment she sighed. "You really do smell bad though."

"Stop smelling me," Kyle suggested.

The young witch rolled her eyes and let go of him. "It's impossible not to smell you. You have a radius effect." She turned on a more imploring look. "Could you please bathe? I'll leave if you want. If that'll help. But please, please take a bath. With soap."

Kyle glanced over at the tub suspiciously then looked at Zoe. "If you leave," he finally agreed, though very reluctantly. He didn't really want her to leave him but he couldn't take a bath with her standing there; or with anyone in the room. He needed to know he was alone.

"Promise you'll bathe," Zoe said, not about to be fooled.

"I promise," he said.

"You promise what?"

"I promise I will bathe," he responded. "With soap."

Zoe nodded and then let herself out, though she still wasn't entirely certain he would do what he said. The last time she left him next to a tub, when she came back he was gone.

Kyle waited till she was out of the room then he locked the door. Then he approached the bathtub cautiously. It looked quite a bit different from the shabby old one he'd used back home. The claw-foot tub looked like something out of an old painting. His mother was dead. Dead-dead, not coming back dead. He had to believe that.

Kyle turned on the water and climbed in before it was warm. He started washing immediately, using soap as promised. He didn't plug the tub and when it came to rinsing he did a lot of splashing. He used soap in his hair too, rinsing it under the running faucet. He got suds in his eyes and it burned but he got himself passably clean. He didn't smell bad anymore, at any rate.

He managed to clean himself so quickly he didn't have time to let the bad thoughts overwhelm him. Soon he was out of the tub and huddled in a towel. He tried to wrap it around his hips, toga-style, but he didn't remember exactly how it was supposed to go and it kept falling off. So he put it over his shoulders and hugged it around himself instead.

Then he looked in the mirror.

He still had a weird mark beneath one eye, like a slowly-fading bruise. He let the towel fall away and looked closer at the body in the reflection. He traced the deep scar in his throat with his fingers, feeling the way the skin dimpled in. The chest attached to his neck wasn't his. He wasn't sure which of his frat brothers it had belonged to but they'd worked out their upper body more than he had. He wondered if it would start to lose some of its tone since he hadn't done any sort of exercise routine in weeks. Maybe it would start to look more like what he remembered. But the nipples would never look like his. And he was missing the freckle on his side that had been there since he was small. His pelvis was another stitch-together. He didn't know who that belonged to but the name Joey floated to mind when he looked at his junk. Joey's junk.

The pubic hair wasn't even the right color. Kyle's hair was blond. His nether hair had been dark blond. The hair down there now was almost black. From Madison's viewpoint it had been the finest of the ones left. Aesthetically it was a fine specimen: Well-proportioned, good size. The owner had been circumcised so in that way at least it was like Kyle's. But it was still someone else's dick.

He'd used it a few times now but he never looked at it then. He touched it now and while it felt the same as before, looking at it was creepy. It was too much like touching another guy. He turned away from the mirror, grabbed the towel and pulled it tight around his shoulders. Then he shut his eyes and he wondered what made a person… a person.

His earliest memories after his death were all jumbled and filled with struggling to make his limbs behave. The guys who had owned them… were they trapped in them still, like he was in his head? He didn't think so or he thought they would have tried to control the head part sooner. But he wasn't positive. He wondered what happened to his parts. Were they buried and rotting somewhere? Had they been cremated? He thought Madison had told him once but he couldn't remember.

Without being aware of it he had started rocking in place while he thought. Someone knocked at the door and he startled, almost bumping into the wall. He shuffled over to the door and opened it. Zoe was there and she looked at him from head to toe and quirked a little smile.

"You okay?"

He nodded. Water dripped from his hair.

"Here," she said and handed him some clean clothes. "You can thank Fiona. She went shopping again."

He nodded again and took the pile of clothing. His towel opened and she couldn't help staring. "Don't, uh, forget to dry your hair," she said, forcing herself to look at his face.

Kyle nodded again and for an awkward moment they just looked at each other. Then Zoe headed away again. She paused at the end of the hall to look back. He waved and she waved back, with that same little smile. Then she disappeared around the corner. He shut the door and went to get dressed.

The clothes were all shades of black, even the boxer shorts. The turtleneck sweater was very soft, lightweight but warm. The jeans smelled strongly of the dye used to color them, a new smell that would only fade after several wears and washes. Kyle hadn't owned jeans that new before. His mother had gotten all of his previous ones at Goodwill.

When he got done dressing he looked at himself in the mirror again. The clothes he wore weren't clothes Kyle would have worn, if nothing else but the cost. He hadn't combed his hair since he woke up in the morgue. He didn't start then either. He just dried it and left it. Then he looked at himself again.

He wasn't sure who or what he was anymore. But whatever it was, he was beginning to think it was better than what he'd left behind. Kyle Spencer was dead. All that was left was Kyle. And he had to find a way to live with himself.

...

* * *

Author's Note:

Kyle's thinking is getting more advanced but so far it hasn't helped him a lot. On the bright side, Zoe understands him a litter better now. Kyle just needs to figure out how to accept his new body as his. It's tough. Being a patchwork guy is not an easy thing to come to terms with.


End file.
